Monday, October 19, 2009

The WSJ carries Rush's response to the critics of his NFL bid: "Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source."

Does he realize that he could diamond stud that golden EIB microphone?

Content is still king. It always will be. There are more than a few rabid sports fans that listen to him. Why not add a "sports" tab to RushLimbaugh.com much like sports.yahoo.com? Listener/citizen reports on sporting events would allow him to build out his own sports wire service. Getting player and coach access for his reporters seems like the hardest part.

Sports is outside of the current mission of the EIB which focuses on political commentary. Ultimately, Rush should do this with political journalism. However, sports offers a kind of proving ground for an eventual move into political news gathering. Rush could start with NFL coverage. Add the NBA and NHL a couple months from now and continue doing that until all major US professional sports are integrated. Then add college sports.

News coverage of the sports world can be ramped up in chunks like this. I think that would be harder to do with political coverage. Sports news is also big enough that Rush's crack technical team can build out the infrastructure required for scalability, reliability, and maintainability. Once the sports "proof of concept" is humming, then he adds the EIB political wire.